


longer than lifetimes

by moonburntmemory



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: (but only kind of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Alina Starkov, Dark, F/M, Fluff, Immortality, Slow Burn, Soulmates, alina and the darkling's bond manifests much sooner, dark soulmatism, let’s make the darkling a dynamic character shall we, no regard to canon i am in charge here, wow mal and alina sibling dynamic so true
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-28 05:33:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30134724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonburntmemory/pseuds/moonburntmemory
Summary: Seamlessly woven strings of fate tangle over the course of a relative eternity. Alina Starkov and the Darkling cannot help but fall victim to ties that bind them.Neither can break from the ruthless cycle of fate connecting them. He is the night that allows all to know the shine of her sun.
Relationships: Mal Oretsev & Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova & Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 30
Kudos: 63
Collections: Grisha Trilogy





	1. you're in my head

After the Grisha examiners faded into the expanse beyond Alina’s known world, she was never alone again. Unfortunately, the constant companionship wasn’t all she’d dreamed of.

It was hard to explain at first– the strange feeling could be attributed to the haze of the fevered sickness that befell her.

But the inexplicable presence didn’t fade with her cough and rattled breaths. It grew stronger as time passed. Some dark corner of her mind was always radiating a sense of uneasiness. It spilled into the other parts of her life like an overturned bottle of ink.

Two weeks after she’d been deemed entirely ordinary, she couldn’t take it any longer. In all of her eight years of life, sleep had never been so out of Alina’s reach. So she padded out of her bedroom and down the hall to Mal’s. Her footsteps were soft on the hardwood floor.

There would be a dire punishment if she was caught, but consequences were not on Alina’s mind. 

She figured that his bedroom may be the one place the strange sense of otherness existing within her could not reach. Upon reaching his door and quietly opening the creaking door, Alina was disappointed to find this wasn’t true. 

Revising her hope, she strode closer to the bed, where the dark-haired boy was starting to stir. Maybe his arms would provide sanctuary. 

“Alina, what are you doing?” Mal questioned, his voice heavy with raspy sleep.

“It’s cold,” she said softly, curling up into the space he’d cleared on the mattress for her. 

It wasn’t a lie. Currents of flaky snow swirled outside his window. But that wasn’t why she was here. 

He knew that wasn’t the whole story. Alina could tell by his pause, but it didn’t matter. He still wrapped his arm around her chest and stayed silent.

There was no need to give the nightmares power by speaking them aloud. This was something they both agreed on. Alina didn’t want to break his carefully crafted assumption with mentions of a force she didn’t even understand.

In a way, she was correct. The plaguing presence in her head grew easier to ignore. The warmth of his embrace soothed her enough to drift off into sleep. If she’d known what awaited her, she wouldn’t have let it take her.

She did not remain stationary in sleep. She could feel the unfamiliarity pooling alongside dread in her stomach as awareness flooded back into her body. Alina opened her eyes to the physical manifestation of shadows that haunted her. She didn’t know how she’d gotten to this unfathomable darkness, but it terrified her. She could feel its imprint in her mind expanding, threatening to consume her.

It was hard to understand and her eyes widened underneath the dripping weight of tears. She wanted to go home. But no matter how hard she willed it, she was stuck in this state of limbo, between two worlds. 

Alina was trapped. And running. And crying. She stumbled blindly until her lungs ached and the darkness started to take definitive shapes. The air took on a distinctive warmth when it reached her lungs and everything changed before her eyes.

There was a blinding light. Then she was in an equally unknown place, although the solidity of walls and a floor were more comforting than the void from which she’d come. It was also bathed in shadow, but she could make out the evidence of habitation. There was a bed at the back wall covered in lavish fabrics that would undoubtedly feel cool against the skin of her cheek. 

It was bigger than any mattress Alina had ever encountered. Practically fit for the King of Ravka. She reached out to touch it, entranced. 

She retreated almost immediately upon seeing its inhabitant.The darkness spilled over her more intensely. That was when he rose.

Alina stumbled back, practically tripping over her own feet. Desperately attempting to scramble away from the strange inhabitant of these foreign chambers, she heard a scuffling sound.

Suddenly caught in the flickering light of a match, she couldn’t even bring herself to scream at the man staring at her.

She couldn't explain how or why, but he was somehow familiar. Like the distant recollection of memories weathered by time, Alina couldn't quite place him. His piercing grey eyes were transfixed on her, wide with shock. The mussed dark hair hanging in his face was the exact shade of his black sleeping clothes. Even more foreboding than the face fit for an arrogant man above her was the dagger in his hand. His knuckles were gripped tightly around the hilt, pointing it right at her.

She scurried away from him in a terrified heap on the floor, letting a panicked gasp escape her mouth. Alina didn’t even know how she’d ended up here, let alone how to leave. And now she was at the mercy of a strange, handsome man holding a knife that glinted with the telltale luminosity of Grisha steel.

The swelling shadows that seemingly danced around her suddenly fell to the ground like a crashing wave. In exact timing with the man lowering his knife. Almost as if he was controlling the darkness.

Alina clapped a hand over her mouth as the living nightmare in front of her refused to fade. He was the embodiment of the whispered stories of corrupting power capable of terrible things. She didn’t want to know just what he was capable of doing to a sickly and small child.

“Who are you?” His voice was deep and reverberated through her being, carrying its own echo in the part of her mind she had been trying to hide from. 

Alina brought her hands to her ears with horrified fury, desperately trying to block out the sounds she didn’t want to hear.

It didn’t work. She could see his lips move and the question rang out in her frantically covered ears. “How did you get here?”

Alina could feel him approaching her fallen form on the floor, his hand cautiously outstretched to her.

She wouldn’t let him touch her. She couldn’t. There was a magnitude between her and this man that she couldn’t ignore. A power radiating off of him. It was intoxicating: the part of her that sought him out, that threatened to consume her. It was dangerous.

Pulling herself up, Alina stumbled blindly out of his grasp. With no particular direction in mind, she spun frantically before her eyes fell upon the towering double doors leading out of the stranger’s realm.

Flinging the exit open, the echo of her bare feet on cold stone rang out through an equally regal hall. It was still a place entirely made of dreams and Alina bit her lip as she tried to decipher the winding structure.

She could hear him coming up behind her when she rounded the first corner she could find, unceremoniously sliding into a wall devoid of warmth. 

When she unclenched her eyelids, she was back in the amorphous expanse of nothingness and its atmosphere of pure terror. 

Alina may have been out of the strange man’s reach, but this place was even worse. She clawed at any hope of escaping, desperately calling for people who wouldn’t hear. Her voice grew hoarse as her eyes started to sting with dryness.

It was an eternity and instant all at once. When she felt as though she couldn’t wander through the oblivion holding her anymore, the sensation of falling backward suddenly overwhelmed her. 

She shook violently in Mal’s bed, throwing the covers off as she stumbled to the floor. His hand, the one that had been on her shoulder shaking her awake, recoiled. 

“W-where am I?” Alina breathed frantically, unable to hear anything beyond the racing blood in her ears.

“You were having another nightmare. You wouldn’t wake up or stop yelling. It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re with me,” he comforted her, gently pulling her back onto the safety of his sheets.

It hadn’t felt like a dream. The details and intricacy of her nightmare had been hauntingly real. Alina wanted to believe that that place could not bleed into her waking hours, but it already had.

She buried her head in Mal’s shoulder, shuddering at the memory of the strange man and his outstretched hand. She didn’t want him to find her. Alina couldn’t explain it, but the palpable pull to him was dangerous. 

It was simply one of those assumptions so undeniably true that no proof was required. The sun would set and the moon would rise every day, whether you believed or not. The inexorable gravitation towards him that occupied her in every moment would bring disaster. And she believed this veritable superstition wholeheartedly.

The foreign presence in her head was harder to ignore after meeting him. It was him. He had stoked the flames burning through Alina’s sanity with the strike of his match. 

Her hands were empty of anything to douse the fire. It would consume her if she wandered too close.

Mal stroked her hair and she wanted to get lost in it. She couldn’t. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked softly.

That man was like her nightmares: speaking of him aloud would make him real, give him power. 

Everyone would think Alina was losing her mind. She may have already let sanity slip through her fingertips. What else could these visions be, outside the realm of subconscious fiction?

Pressing all of the terror and tendrils of darkness within her into a compact little corner, Alina sniffled into Mal’s shoulder. She would forget about it and keep the weight tucked away, far away from her chest and heart. 

“No, but thank you,” she whispered. “I-It was just a dream.”

Alina wanted desperately to believe these reassurances. She didn’t.


	2. –and won't go away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trying to finish this before spring break ends go brrrr

It became a part of her routine; ingrained into her, necessary to stave off the evils that awaited Alina in unconsciousness. 

She would sleep in her own room with the door and her mind barred to any intrusion. With each day that passed, the unwelcome parts of her were buried further under her steely will. Eventually, suppressing the feeling became second nature, as easy as breathing.

Pulling away from Mal and everyone else was an unfortunate side effect. But it was one she was willing to live with. She was tired and preoccupied far too much because of her attempts to save herself. There wasn’t much left to share with others. 

There were nights that Alina suddenly felt the layers of denial and fear piled on top of her, ready to topple down onto the sheets of her bed. But she would whisper to herself, “None of it is real,” in her most convincing voice possible and bury her head under the covers.

It worked, mostly. She slept through the nights fitfully, but without any recollection of visiting strange lands. Alina watched the gauntness creep onto her face as the shadows she repressed found a home under her eyes and cheekbones. 

It was a small price to pay for relative safety. 

However, there came a day when it still wasn’t enough. The summer downpour pattered against the window panes and roof, a lulling haze of grey following the monotonous sound. 

It had been many years. Over time, Alina found herself wrapped in a false sense of security. So she followed Mal into his bed with a lazy smile and wrapped her arms around him in sleep. He was warm amidst the chilling cold curling around them. 

His warmth couldn’t protect her from anything other than the cold. 

She opened her eyes and it was familiar. She could retrace the grooves of this place in a blind fog as the ground shifted beneath her and find her way. The fireplace in the corner of the room held the flickers of flame, glazing over the harshness in the room with a gentle glow.

He was sitting in a straight-backed chair beside it and turned his head to face her, immediately aware of her presence. He looked exactly the same, albeit less ethereal in the generous light of fire instead of the dimness of a match. 

There was a serene mask of indifference carved into his features. It seemed too controlled to be natural. Almost like he was expecting her. The mere thought raised the soft strands of hair on the back of Alina’s neck.

She wasn’t an eight-year-old girl anymore. Alina was thirteen and would not cower before this strange nightmare of a man. She stood her ground with wide eyes and slightly shaking feet.

He smiled, raising a curious eyebrow as he took her in. “You’ve grown quite a bit.”

Alina’s body went rigid as his words cocooned her in their silky rasp, holding her captive like a pitiful insect caught in a spider’s web.

Everything she had hidden and feared in the past five years broke free of its carefully constructed prison. The dull sensation that usually faded into soft background noise in the face of real-life grew to agonizing pain. It felt like undiluted and overwhelming sorrow, generations of loss compounded into itself. Tears threatened to spill onto Alina’s cheeks.

She readied herself to run– it had worked the last time– when he spoke again with anticipatory wisdom. “I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t have to flee.”

Her mouth was suddenly pushed to the foot of a great mountain range. All the moisture in her throat evaporated, leaving a cracking expanse of desert behind. Her response came out as a choked whisper. “W-why are you doing this to me? Why am I here?”

The strange man’s lips parted as he inhaled, rising from his chair. There was a cloudiness in his eyes that reminded Alina of the sun’s hazy shine behind torrents of rain. He hadn’t been expecting that answer.

“I assure you, I’m not responsible for any of this. It’s entirely your doing,” he said in a soothing voice that seemed as deliberate as sacrificing pawns on a checkered chessboard.

“That’s not possible. I’m dreaming. You’re not real,” Alina countered, grasping for some semblance of assurance in the uncomfortable warmth of his bed chambers.

He had the audacity to laugh. Alina’s prickling spite manifested in a sour-mouthed frown on her face. “I assure you, I am real.”

He stepped closer. She retreated farther. Understanding the delicate balance preventing Alina from bolting out of the door and into the unknown again, he didn’t encroach any further. “It doesn’t make sense. I went to bed and woke up here again. Why does this keep happening?”

There was brief sympathy in his eyes and the slight slouch of his shoulders. Then it was gone like a mirage once the tired desert goers collapsed at the banks of what they thought was an oasis. “I don’t know. I... can’t explain it.”

“Well, then who can?”

He ignored her question, lost in his own self-important pondering. “You shouldn’t be able to do this. Who are you?”

He had asked this before. Years ago. She hadn't answered. She still wouldn’t. “The better question is: Who exactly are you? Why am I drawn here? Where even is this?”

“Answer my question first.” It was a demand, not a request. 

Alina stepped further back, putting blessed distance between her and the man with a face carved out of unyielding granite. He didn’t look like the type to give answers; he expected his own questions to have priority. This was a man who exuded power and had grown accustomed to commanding authority.

Alina didn’t particularly care. “No.”

It was obvious he wasn’t used to being disobeyed. But Alina wasn’t a sobbing little girl anymore. She wasn’t going to back down and run away crying again. 

She could feel his anger the way he did, not just through the narrowing of his eyes and twitch of his firmly set mouth. It was her anger, too. The foreign presence within her fed on it, spreading through her like the white-holt lines of lightning through the glassy surface of a lake. 

“Get out of my head! Stop forcing your darkness on me!” Alina turned to run and he lurched forward to follow her. 

He closed his hand around her wrist, pulling her into him. But his fingertips never made contact with her skin. Alina fell into the shadows behind her, dissolving from his view. 

It was easier this time- finding her way home. Instead of blindly tacking into winds whipping her hair in every direction, there was a beacon of light that led her back to where she belonged. 

Her memories guided her back to Mal’s warm side. Alina didn’t want to reflect on how natural this cursed pull became the more she indulged it. She tried to shut the strange man and his darkness out again, along with everyone else. Relinquishing herself to the comfort and deep sleep of Mal’s grasp would only make this worse. This had happened because she let her guard down. She couldn’t afford to do so again.

She was out of his reach but his voice echoed in her ears long after the shadows placed an opaque veil over her eyes. Even after her eyelids were bathed in thin strips of dewy morning light from Mal’s bed, his words– and the promise– were burned into her very being. “I will find you again. One day.”

Alina hoped this would loom over her as the last in a long string of broken promises. If he was the exception, she was doomed.


	3. bleed into reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imagine having a consistent update schedule

When the light consumed her and Mal's broken body as she clutched him tightly, Alina saw him again. 

The stretches between their meetings were long, but there wasn’t a day that went by where his face wasn’t painted in vivid shades across her closed eyelids. She couldn’t forget him, no matter how hard she tried. He was easy to recognize because he never really changed. Since their first meeting, Alina had grown from a scared child into a woman. But time had not weathered even the finest edges of his face.

He was staring into the empty space before him, rigid posture lending him an air of control that made Alina blink a few times in disbelieve. The sharp slope of his jawline tilted as he turned to face her, eyes still unseeing. Addressing some invisible force beyond Alina’s influence, his lips started to move in unreadable shapes. She couldn't hear a word. Was she dead? 

She couldn't feel any traces of Mal's warm blood soaking into her clothes anymore. Her eyelids didn't ache from shutting them so tightly that the pain and _volcra_ would fade into the background. Alina might have been picked apart within the fold. There was no way to tell.

Had he followed her into the afterlife, that desperate to torment her? Was the bond between them stronger than death? 

Alina lamented his presence, but she soon found his absence was far worse. As soon as he faded, she wanted him back. He’d brought with him a buttery warmth of illumination that painted him in light, like some sort of false idol. He was at least something familiar that inundated her with memories of tangibility. 

Then he was gone. And Alina was alone again in the darkness. Against an indistinguishable amount of time within the fabric of her nightmares, an eternity with the man that haunted them became appealing. He must have been an illusion, a trick of her ailing mind

Like all of her starless sky-imitation nightmares, this one eventually came to an end. The shifting darkness faded into a solid, tangible one. She awoke in a stiffly uncomfortable bed, intensely grateful for the fact she was not dead. 

The desire to kiss the dirt and thank the mercy of the saints for miraculous survival was immediately interrupted by the sore tightness rippling through her body. That and the questions that started to float up to the surface of her mind after being submerged for so long.

How had she survived? The last thing she remembered was unclear- like she was staring at the memory through a current-rippled stream. She’d been slipping off the precipice of her own mortality, recklessly using her own body to shield Mal. And then the world had faded into the light and darkness. 

Alina was given no time to nurse these questions or the aching of her entire body before the workings of military efficiency started to trickle into her view. Most notably in the form of a loaded gun pointed at her forehead. With the safety off.

Grisha and soldiers crowded around her in a commotion, stirring in a flurry of chaos at the news she was awake. The colors of vibrant _keftas_ swirled around her vision, making the room spin even faster than the lull of the skiff’s hull could manage.

Men who wouldn’t have given her the time of day in the weeks leading up to their skirmish in the fold were suddenly close enough to kick in the shins. Alina refrained from any rash action while there were deadly weapons fixed on her. It was not an easy task.

They peppered her with questions she couldn’t answer, under some deluded impression that she knew anything about the fold beyond her delve into unconsciousness. Any hope of knowing Mal’s fate was quickly crushed as she was forced out of the bed and towards the docks. Alina swayed slightly as she stumbled onto the wooden slats above the waves below, still trying to compensate for the gentle rocking of a vessel she was no longer on. 

The chain of command was obviously useless, judging by how many times Alina was asked the same questions by men who grew even denser the farther up in leadership they sat. She suffered through a seemingly never-ending barrage of interrogation until she didn’t think she could stand it anymore. But it did prove to be finite. Eventually, she was led to the imposing grandeur of the Grisha tent, situated high above the insignificant happenings of those fighting the war.

She was paraded in like the prize goat of the season into a lavish form of finery in a concentration she’d never experienced in her entire life. Contempt rose in her throat like bile, accompanying the mind-numbing fear for herself and Mal.

They were the obedient soldiers who had marched off into likely death for some warped version of patriotism. This was how their country repaid them.

Alina kept the turbulent anger from finding its way onto her face as she was pulled before a looming dais. She shuffled like a fragile grandmother as her muscles protested every moment. Mumbled whispers dissipated as knowledge of her presence fell over the room. She could make out unconcealed suspicion in the eyes of every person blatantly staring at her. 

Her glances around the room revealed ill-hidden contempt and morbid curiosity. If only Alina knew what she had done to deserve this attention. Especially from the assortment of Grisha surrounding her.

The spectrum of emotions she felt was reduced to a single selection in a matter of seconds. There was a war table in the center of the room. It was flanked by powerful people with distrusting eyes that send ghostly touches by imagined hands shivering through her body. At its head, there was a throne.

Like so many things in the gilded prison, it was regal and powerful. Its intricately carved patterns were set into the unyielding ebony with skillful hands. But Alina gave none of these things more than a passing recognition.

All of her attention was irrevocably pulled to the figure atop the throne, encased in robes of shadow and night. Alina’s jaw fell like a bridge atop crumbling cliff lines into chasms below.

Her nightmares had come to life, breathing right before her. She had to crane her neck up to see his elevated postition, but the face gazing back at her was one that would never fade from her memory. Not after being seared into it with blazing fire and fury.

She had never truly been before him until now– not without the help of dreamlike forces beyond her control. He looked exactly the same as in her sleep, like commissioned art behind the locked doors meant for only certain eyes to see. Beautiful and elusive. 

Alina let a small gasp escape her as she finally registered the charcoal hue of his _kefta_. There was little room for interpretation in the representation of status that distinguished him from all others. He appeared younger than what should be possible, but his title was now undeniable.

The man who infiltrated her dreams was the Darkling. The most powerful Grisha in all of Ravka. Probably the world. And he was fixed on Alina as if no other inhabitants were surrounding him, letting a slight smile grace his lips.

In the depths of herself, there was no disbelieving shock. In its place were powerful currents of satisfying realization, as if the scattered pieces of a broken china piece had been drawn back together. This was supposed to happen. She couldn't explain it, but there was something inevitable about him. 

Alina may have been much younger during their midnight meetings in the past, but her recollection was flawless. She knew him when she was eight, thirteen, and mere minutes ago. This was him. The Darkling was not easy to forget– her many attempts had been in vain. 

She could see him going through the motions practically every time she closed her eyes. He had moved the shadows on the walls and the ones inside of her. Darkness had always seemed to be a part of his nature. Now she had an explanation. 

Words were spilling from Colonel Raevsky’s mouth, but Alina heard none of them. She barely noticed her crewmates from the skiff piling into the room under the command of barked orders. The only thing that could break her transfixed stare from the Darkling’s endless eyes was Mal.

He was in line with the others, looking worse for wear but gratefully and blessedly alive. Alina managed to tear her eyes away from the manifestation of her subconscious plague for a millisecond. Mal was unharmed and she drank in the evidence like a dying beast collapsing at the bank of a river. She hadn't lost everything. Yet.

Her relief could not last long. Mal may be the closest thing she had to family in this room, but the Darkling managed to completely eclipse him with a single sentence.

When colonel finally paused for a breath, the Darkling announced to everyone and only her, “I told you I would find you.”

Alina had doubted his words before they held the authority of the entire Second Army. She would not do so again. 

Because they had come together despite every step taken apart. And in a deep place where she didn’t admit truths aloud, Alina felt unshakeable relief for this.

**Author's Note:**

> updates weekly 
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/moonburntmemory) and [twt](https://twitter.com/moonburntmemory)


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